A BRAVE FRENCH GENTLEMAN

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 71, 17 December 1917, Page 15

A BRAVE FRENCH GENTLEMAN

HOW HE RISKED HIMSELF AND FAMILY

TO SAVE TWO BRITISH SOLDIERS

.It happened in l.li C dark hours just bctoro (lie dawn of the victory of the Maine at a country house, near the banks of one of Mm many blood-stained rivers of the-, field of battle- (writes the ""Tiiuos's" special correspondent at. French Headquarters). 'IVday the place and the woods sunvninding' it are as peaceful to look at as anything in France. .So is tlio white-haired owner, a man, J suppose, of something well over 70, a refined, courteous Frenchman of the old French, school; then it , was different.- . AVhen the war came ho .had staying, with him his sou's wife . and family of young children, and at I the beginning of 'September they were J still there, surrounded by the troops of ■Hie' enemy and' the noise of battle, and in. constant, danger i'rmn -tho shells of the British guns. But from them, there was shelter in the cellars. The risk that..he faced of his own free will and with open eyes was far greater and. more alarming .. There were German .soldiers arid officers .everywhere,. in. the house itself, in the stables, and. in the buildiugs of. the home farm. .The day before,there' had been furious fighting close'at hand, along both banks of tho river r the men were worn out by their exertions, and the German commanding officer quartered in the house had given orders that reveille that morning was not to sound till six o'clock. At a quarter past five, the old man servant, the only one left on the place, went to his master's room and told him that he had found two Kurdish soldiers hiding in a hay-cart in the stable-yard, and that they wanted to know if he would go and speak to them. He Quickly nut on some clothes, thinking all the lime what was the right thing to do (though he never really hesitated for a moment), and wont out into the yard, taking in his hand-, as ho well knew not onlv his own life, hut the lives, ,or at all events the liberty, of bis grandchildren and their mother. The colonel had explained to him that they wero taking no English prisoners, and incidentally what would happen to anyone who wps f.o ill-.idvised as to stand between the Imperial troops and their legitimate nrey. On Ihe strength • of that he felt that no choice was left him. He meant to save the men if hecould. But he was liorribly-frioihten-ed. I know that because he told me so, A Sentry in the Way. The Germans apparently were all still asleep, and ho thought at first, and was extremely-glad-to think, that, no one was stirring. Ho bad forgotten the sentry, arid when ho suddenly' saw him with fixed bayonet slowly marching up and down tho yard his heart sank. But he was a man of resource, as well as of courage. He gave the German, a tired -hungry-look-ing fellow, a cheerful good morning, and, asking him if he would like some-, thing to cat, led the way into tile kit-f chen, and fetched down a loaf, a ham, \ and a bottle of wine.. Then he reminded him that reveille was not for another half-hour, and went out and shut the door.

Tho cart was standing at the fur end of the yard. From the nests that they had burrowed in the hay, two towsled British heads looked 'wit at him, and two tired British voices told him their story, while- he listened with a nervous eye on the liitehen'door,' and prayed that the Boche -might mid the ham to his taste. He knew almost as little English as they did French, but somehow they managed to understand each other. The iirst thing he made out—they seemed to think more of that than anything else—was that they had had nothing to eat for twentyfour hours, and, as an afterthought, that one of them was wounded. At the end of the fight on the evening before they had got separated from the regiment, both of them dead-beat, and had hidden in a tunnel near che canal till night came and the coast seemed to be clear. Then they had crawled to tho nearest house, hoping to find French people in it, without a suspicion that it was swarming with the enemy, till they nearly ran up apainst .the sentry in the dark. But it was the dark that saved them. The rest «f the troops bad turned in, they felt too tired and weak to go back, and nyinaged to slip into the cart wliilo the sentry's back was turned, and there they had laid all night till thev managed to get a word, with the old servant in the morning.

The Escape. Meanwhile the gallant old Frenchman was thinking hard. He thought of everything—ot the sentry,, of vhe colonel, of the white wall of "the stable yard, of the sleeping woman and children in the house, and of the two English soldiers and how they were to escape before reveille sounded. He even thought of their craving for food. They wero to get off as fast as they could, he told them, to si' certain place in his woods (in which he knew there wero no Germans), and wait there till he could get a chance of sending them something to eat. . Then they were to make their way, still under cover of the woods, to a town a few miles down tho river, which was just beyond the furthest point which the Germans reached in this direction during their advance on Paris, and at that lime a kind of No Man's Lund. ,-\ little way below tho bridge, which, like all the bridges in that part of the world, had been broken down, they would tind an old fisherman of his acf|uaintanee who would put Ihcm across the river in his boat, and once on the other side they would get into the I'Vrwh lines. With tlie hard and fast lines of the trench period the Ihiiig would of course impossible. In. that first September, when there were often "unexplored iind unoccupied spaces between Ihe I'agßcd fronts, it was not only possible, bill actuallv happened. .Everything went exactly as it was planned, from tho smuggling of the suack of something In cat into (he woods and lho- finding of the fisherman and his boat to'tho final escape of the two Knglish soldiers inlo friendly lefritory. The man who saved their lives at Hie risk of his own i-un see iiothinc pnrficiilarly brave in what he Jlicl. because when be did il- be was. '.'horribly frightened." .But for quickness of decision and unhesitating . courage this little incident, of (he great war is tint one'of Hie least of the long list of golden deeds Hint are the undviug glory of the eicil population of I'Vance.